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Several Shiners girls immigrated to America from
their home in county Tipperary in Ireland.* They
were the daughters of Thomas and Ellan Flanley
Shiner. In 1903 two worked as domestic servants, and
three were married. On December 30, two of the
sisters, Maggie and Alice, went to an afternoon
matinee performance of Mr. Bluebeard at Chicago's
newest theater, the Iroquois. Both lost their lives in
the fire that afternoon that killed over 600 people.
Twenty-eight-year-old Margaret Shiners Cogan
(b.1875) had married bookkeeper Dominic Cogan (1871–
) four years previously. They had not yet started a
family. Dominic was a co-owner in a business with
two uncles, John Flanley and Patrick H. Martin. The
Cogan's lived at 5904 Normal Avenue in Chicago.
Twenty-six-year-old Alice Shiner(b.1877) worked as a domestic servant for the Maurice
E. Mills family on Oakenwald in Chicago.
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The household included Maurice and his wife, Jessie, and
his parents, Fannie and Henry Mills.
A fourth sister, Mary Shiners, worked as a domestic
servant for the Eugene McCarthy family. A fifth was
married to a Breen and a sixth to an O'Brien.
The sisters' bodies were identified by their
half-brother, police officer Thomas Grace.
High mass was said for their funeral the morning of
Monday, January 4, 1904, at St. Anne's church. They
were buried in the Cogan family plot at Mount Olivet
Cemetery in unmarked graves.
In the years after the fire
Dominick Cogan married another Irish immigrant, also named Margaret. The
pair had several children.
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